Classic TV Revisited: The Little And Large Show

Syd and Eddie’s old-fashioned appeal in the Little and Large show first reached our screens on ITV in 1976 before the pair moved to the BBC for their own series which ran from 1978-1991.

Appearance?
Old-fashioned, formulaic double act show which viewers loved at the time but which gets something of a hard time these days.

Why was it memorable?
The formula hardly changed — each week tubby Eddie Large did Deputy Dawg and Cliff Richard impressions. At the same time he always interrupted bespectacled Syd Little who was trying to sing and play guitar.

How did it begin?
Syd Little was playing in a pub in the early ’60s when Eddie Large in the audience began to heckle him and then joined the act.

Weren’t the police called?
No, because the audience loved Eddie’s Cliff Richard impersonation and a new double act was born.

Were they really called Little and Large?
No, Syd is really one-time painter and decorator Cyril Mead and Eddie is Man City fan Eddie McGinnis.

How did they get on to TV?
Their big break was winning Opportunity Knocks in 1971. I mean that most sincerely. As a result they landed an ITV series in 1976 and were snapped up by the BBC for a long-running Saturday night show from 1978. How different it might have been if Eddie Large had not been injured in his youth and given up hope of a football career.

What went wrong?
They were axed by the BBC when their humour went stale.

How popular were they?
They were huge in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Was it just grannies who were fans?
No, whole families watched them — 18.1m tuned in to one show in 1980, more than watch EastEnders or Corrie now.

Why did the critics hate them?
They probably got sick of Eddie churning out Kermit, Top Cat, Rod Stewart and of course Deputy Dawg each week. The routine, based on slapstick, hardly varied from show to show.

What did Syd Little do?
Many critics often asked this question as Eddie Large did all of the impressions. “Supersonic”, as he was known, resembled John Major. He was the straightest of straight men.

Did he ever finish one of his songs?
The joke was always the same — he never finished a song as Eddie heckled him with one-liners. Syd just tried to strum his guitar and looked bemused behind his thick glasses.

How did they compare to other double acts?
They were a poor man’s Morecambe and Wise but they raised more laughs than Cannon and Ball.

How dare you, I liked that pair.
Rock on Tommy, then. They never measured up to The Two Ronnies but were a definite improvement on Mike and Bernie Winters.

What happened to Syd and Eddie?
They appeared live on the club circuit after their TV careers dried up.

Kick-Ass TV Heroines: Xena – Warrior Princess

What was not to love about Xena? As Lucy Lawless says: “Xena is a bad-ass, kick-ass, pre-Mycenaean girl.” Evildoers, clearly, must stand down, but not only bad guys (and girls) have Xena-phobia. Even heroes quake when she swings her broadsword.

Originally created as a syndicated complement to Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena pretty much kicked Herc to the curb. It was like when the Bionic Woman made us lose interest in the Six Million Dollar Man–only more so.

Unlike Lindsay Wagner’s early half-woman, half-machine, Xena wasn’t prone to frailty. Nor did she need robot parts. In fact, the Warrior Princess never lost. If she’s down, it’s not for long.

Plus, she was in touch with the dark side: This big-boned bruiser had definite moments of blood lust, as well as lust of some other varieties. Garbed in a leather miniskirt and armed with her trademark razor-edged, boomerang-action chakram, we watched Xena single-leggedly kick down entire platoons of Roman soldiers.

Sure, there were murmurings about Xena and her softer female sidekick, Gabrielle (actress Renée O’Connor). So what if they liked to conserve bathwater by doubling up? And what’s wrong with close friends frenching once in a while?

Classic TV Revisited: McMillan And Wife

Starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James, McMillan and Wife was a super cute crime-solving saga from the 1970s made for the NBC’s Mystery Movie series.

Who were they?
Hubby was the debonair San Francisco police commissioner Stewart McMillan.

And wifey?
Sally was a foxy, rather scatterbrained dame with a knack for finding corpses.

Worked down the morgue did she?
Hardly. Sally’s finds were usually in some glitzy mansion which the couple were frequenting for a weekend cocktail party. She also had a habit of getting her life threatened or being kidnapped.

Who was in it?
Tragic Hollywood star Rock Hudson no less. He took on Stewart McMillan in his first TV role, after years as a matinee idol with movies such as Giant.

Tragedy?
Fans of the lantern-jawed star were dismayed when he went public about having Aids. He had long kept his homosexuality secret. He carried on working in ’80s glam drama Dynasty, but make-up could not disguise the deterioration of this once-statuesque man. He died in 1985, aged 59.

What about Sally?
That role fell to raven-locked Susan Saint James. The Ali MacGraw lookalike was previously in shows such as Alias Smith And Jones and The Name of the Game.

Other characters
A vital ingredient to McMillan And Wife was sharp-tongued housekeeper Mildred, played by Nancy Walker. Somebody needed to keep the place tidy while they gallivanted about solving crime.

Famous guest stars?
Kim Basinger

The couple’s conception?
Like Hart To Hart, the idea was borrowed from Dashiell Hammett’s Thin Man books of the ’30s.

Gritty crime drama?
Hardly. These were cosy whodunnit cases, where the brutality of murder was never portrayed. The show was more about the interplay between McMillan and Sally.

Had viewers arrested?
Certainly in the US. It was the fifth highest-rated show in 1972 and 1973.

Fate of the golden couple?
Susan Saint James quit in 1976 over a contractual dispute. Nancy Walker also packed away her duster as housekeeper Mildred.

The dame’s exit was a fatal blow?
Certainly for the character of Sally – she was killed off in a plane crash. But Rock soldiered on with new assistant Sgt Steve DiMaggio (Richard Gilliland). The show became McMillan.

Classic TV Revisited: The Royal

The Royal was an ITV drama commission and was inspired by its sister programme Heartbeat.

The lowdown: This nostalgic family drama is set in the swinging 1960s and centres on the staff of a cottage hospital in Yorkshire. Newly qualified doctor David Cheriton (Julian Ovenden) is determined to make a difference to the world and arrives at St Aidan’s Royal Free Hospital in Elinsby full of big ideas. But he clashes with the hospital’s secretary TJ Middleditch (Ian Carmichael) who is determined to run things his way. Then there is the Matron (Wendy Craig) who rules her nurses with a rod of iron and tries in vain to stop them being distracted by the handsome arrival.

Memorable moments: Watch out for former Heartbeat favourite Bill Maynard who crosses dramas and continents as Claude Jeremiah Greengrass. Greengrass has returned from a Caribbean holiday with a mystery illness but that doesn’t stop him trying to earn a fast buck. It doesn’t take long before Claude attracts Matron’s ire.

Trivia: The Royal is a family affair for real life husband and wife Robert Daws (Ormerod) and Amy Robbins (Weatherill). No fewer than seven members of their clan have appeared in the series including their daughters and stepson.

Michelle Hardwick, who played receptionist Lizzie, says her favourite moment in the whole series didn’t come on screen but in the actors’ green room. She says: “I was sitting in there with Wendy Craig and Honor Blackman and we were having a lovely conversation. I sat back and thought ‘Wow, this is great, I can’t wait to tell my gran’.”

A modern day set version called The Royal Today aired 7 January – 14 March 2008.